Nikola Tesla Analysis

Nikola Tesla was a very interesting person for the subject of a project. The project was by
far the one in which the most was learned, not only in the topic itself but also in making the
products. Unlike the prior two projects, in which the scope was small enough for focus, Tesla
simply was too big, with numerous biographies, and even a movie to his name. As a result the
project over spilled to much longer that one six week period.
My research started with online sources to provide an overview of the topic, then moved
on to books, live, and other sources. A new approach in researching was to follow the source
links on the Wikipedia article of Tesla. As there were more than 100 links, many new sources
were not found, but the list confirmed the validity of those sources already present. One
particularly useful source found was Teslas autobiography, which though was found online, was
in reality a primary source. Not only did it provide an account from Teslas prospective, but also
a scope of the events that Tesla himself considered key points of his life as well as a ready supply
of quotes for those key events.
The one problem in research for this project was previewing the shorter sources before
taking notes on them. Although overviewing the topic is a very good step, after reading the
sources and taking notes on them, I often became confused if a note had been taken on the piece
of information or not. All of the sources used extremely similar phrases to describe the same
events in Teslas life, and in more places than one I had to stop and think if I had read the text
before. The problem became both that the same note was taken twice, and that a note was not
taken at all. Another problem that occurred was that while reading a source I would quickly
scrawl out a note card, and continue reading the source, so that the notes were not only illegible

but in some cases the date of an event that occurred was wrong by one digit, which created a
number of confusions between 1880s and 1890s.
My live source was more helpful than those of the previous tow projects. Although in the
other two projects the live source provided information and supplies for a product, in this project
the live source, Sam Webb, also provided other sources and confirmed events from those
sources. Though no one fixed interview took place, in numerous times, most often after reading
about a time when Tesla had either been cheated, or invented something amazing, the live source
served as one outlet to both confirm the event and to relieve pent up amazement.
The most fulfilling part of the Nikola Tesla project was creating a manually powered
electric generator. Though creating one had been a hope previously, the Tesla project made it
incredibly easier to actually accomplish. Although my expectation was to have built the
generator in two or three sittings, it was made throughout the course of the project. As a
generator only requires two parts, this, at times, became an annoyance. At the end, it should be
noted, when the generator was tested, no voltage was being generated which may have been for a
number of reasons.
The generator began only on paper, which is much easier to make corrections on than
wood. Though I had for quite some time wanted to make a generator, whether the magnets
rotated around a coil of wire or a coil of wire rotated around a magnet was a detail that always
lapsed from my mind. After it was determined that it was the magnets doing the rotating another
problem was encountered, though more of an extremely simple mistake than an actual problem.
While drawing examples of the generator the magnet and coil had always been drawn on the
same piece, which, as I was seeing it, would mean that the wires coming from the coil would be

tangled as the magnets spun. The drawings themselves were flawed, as the fixture would be
spinning, and the magnets and coil stayed stationary in comparison to one another.
After this lapse in attention was solved by drawing the coil and magnet independent of
one another, the issue of spinning the magnets arose. Being in Lego League, gears seemed to be
the best option. The Lego gears, moreover the axles, would neither be nearly strong enough to
spin not support the magnets. Gears would then need to be made of wood. But the preciseness of
the teeth would have been unnecessarily complicated. Because of this, a pulley and belt system
was chosen to accelerate the rotations.
For the belt system wheels were needed. At the time a wooden wheel seemed to be
inferior to a clay one, as in creating a near perfect circle using straight lines or a fixed radii the
latter seemed easier. At this point I had bought wooden dowels from Home Depot. While there
ready made wheels were looked for and no desirable ones found; though there were circular
pieces for actual pulleys, the axle hole was too small, and dowel of that size would be too weak
to support the weight or tension for which it would be used for. As ready made wheels were not
found, a clay one, made at the pottery kiln seemed the next best option.
Having been in the pottery studio only once before, and never having touched clay since
third grade, I was somewhat lost in how to explain to Mr. Schroeder what it was I wanted to
make, aside from a circle. Though I had drawn everything on paper I had not put any numbers
for measurements. What had been my plan was to use one of the electric power wheels to spin a
flat piece of clay into a circle, create an edge to the circle, and have a very good wheel. Although
this seemed simple Mr. Schroeder, as it seemed to me, didnt understand and asked more
questions than I thought necessary. Mr. Schroeder, whos decision I cannot judge for my
inexperience with clay, thought it to be better idea to take a flat piece of clay, stencil a circle and

cut it out. At the time I was a bit frustrated, seeing as all I wanted to make was essentially a
circle. When Mr. Schroeder asked the questions he must have only been wondering for what
anyone would need a circle for. The later questions were only confirming the size, width, and
other dimensions of the circle, so that I myself would know what I was making, rather than the
about five inches.
The compass used was certainly more useful in making spirals than actual circles, and a
ruler had to be used to manually draw 16 radii for each circle. My cutting the smaller of the two
circles out resulted in the creation of a shape that was more of a square with rounded edges than
a circle, and so Mr. Schroeder cut both circles. In cutting the circles into the clay I held the knife
used to cut the clay at a very sharp angle, making an edge far from perpendicular to the face.
Again Mr. Schroeder cut the pieces for me. After the wheels were cut the rim was created, using
the same knife to gradually indent the center of the circumference. All that remained at this point
was to carve a hole in the center of the circle through which an axle could be attached. The
majority of the stencils and stamps in the kiln where in the shape of hearts, teardrops, rainbows,
and other non-circular shapes. The only circle, fortunately, was exactly inches, the same size
as the largest dowel. After placing a mark on the center of the circle, the axle-hole was eye-balled
in, again, very luckily, nearly perfectly-centered. The only mistake I had made was to have made
the wheels on a Monday, which meant the wheels would not be fired until the next Saturday, and
so I would receive them a week from then. But as the following week was that of Winter Break,
it would actually be three weeks before I would receive the wheels.
The Monday following break, after taking the Work Room Safety Test, work on the stand
for the generator was started. The one note that might be added to the safety test would be that
the first time we used the power tools, Mr. Debbink and I broke about a third of the General

Safety rules. In the past weeks of drawing the generator I had been in the work room looking for
the pieces that would be best suited for the job at hand, and so all that was now needed to be
done was the pieces to be cut. Although most of the drawings for the generator were labeled with
measurements, they all were simply to give a sense of certainty in exactly how the generator
would turn out. All of the actual cuts were made based on the sizes of the wood available. Mr.
Debbink made the first two cuts using the circular saw, then handed the last one of to me. I had
been somewhat unfamiliar with the circular saw, both having never used one before and having
the acute impression that it was more than capable of cutting through thin bones such as those of
a finger. The drill press on the other hand was self explanatory, only the first hole had to be made
by Mr. Debbink, and then the rest left to me. To be safe side two holes were made for the larger
wheel, but as the radiuses of the wheel had not been taken into account; the second hole did not
matter.
Now everything had been cut and all the pieces, at least for spinning the magnets, were
present. The same day everything was put together, but not glued. Spinning the wheels a few
times made me realize that both wheels would need to be on the same plane for the rubber band
to stay on while the wheels where spinning for any great number of rotations. No work was than
done on the generator for a week. The following week all of the components were glued together
and was another week before magnets and LEDs were found for the generator.
Though the LEDs were ready to use, one of the two magnets was broken. The break was
not irreparable, the bar had only split in two, but both bars were now of drastically different
lengths, which would make it much harder to suspend a coil between the two bars. It was not
until the end of the week until the magnets were super glued together, and work could continue.
Though the magnets were now ready to use, they still needed to be attached to the generator. In

fact, up until this point neither of the two key components, the magnets and coil, of a generator
had even been worked on. Another week passed before the magnets could be attached to the
smaller wheel with epoxy.
By this time I was somewhat frustrated at the slow progress of the generator, and the
following day brought all the supplies need to finish it once and for all. It is hard to explain or
express the length of time the generator took when explaining the event in chronological order,
but from when the wheels had been made to this point was just about eight weeks, more than one
six week block. The first thing to finish was the coil, without which the generator would not do
anything. Although it was planned to make the coil very precisely, wrapping the wire around a
spool could most accurately be described as a random mess. The coil then had to be suspended
between the two magnets for it to actually be of any use. Looking back now I laugh at how the
generator is quite literally made from rubber bands, paperclips, tape, glue, and mud. Two paper
clips were attached with hot glue, a larger one for height and a small one to suspend the coil
between the two magnets.
So now the generator was done. All that was left was to do was test it. The first run came
up empty, or in the case of the LEDs, dark. As LEDs can only work when the current runs in a
certain direction through them, in the next run the LED was flipped. Still it did not light. The
easiest test to determine why the LED did not light was to test whether the LED actually worked,
which it did. The next test was whether or not current could pass through the coil, which it could.
Although LEDs use less energy than regular bulbs of similar size, a regular bulb was also tried,
and obviously there still was no light.
There are a number of things that could be stopping the creation of a current by the
generator. The simplest would be that the generator is not spinning fast enough. This is the most

likely as household electricity is generated near 60 cycles per second, or 60 rotations per second,
whereas this generator only spins, to be generous, ten to fifteen times per second. Another
problem could be that the magnets are not close enough to move electrons in the coil. This is
quite unlikely as while the epoxy attaching the magnets to the clay wheel were drying, both
magnets were being pulled close to one another, which meant the magnetic field should be more
than enough to pass through the coil. Moreover the magnet, when spinning, often collided with
the coil, and the magnets are certainly strong enough to effect the coil at a distance of a few
centimeters. The fact that the generator does not have brushes, which have been in all the
generators I have seen may be another problem. Though this, as well, is unlikely as electricity is
electron flow, which is formed from the magnets rotating around the wire, and so brushes are not
needed in generating electricity, only to transfer it from the coil to where it is needed next. What
may be an equally likely explanation to the magnets not spinning enough is that the resistance in
the wire may be too great. While running a raw battery through a multimeter, the batterys
aperture read nearly four, but running the battery first through the coil, than back to the
multimeter the reading was a quarter of what it was before.
The written product seemed more of a burden in comparison to the non-written one, but
was successful despite this. Very early in drafting the essay it was realized that it would simply
be too huge, and so in many places items were skipped over. The outline had had three subtopics,
Teslas life, inventions, and an analysis of the two. Also while drafting the essay my attention
turned to the analysis more than Teslas life, so much so that the analysis was written before the
events of Teslas life. The analysis was much easier to write, not needed as rigid a structure in
comparison to the writing the events of Teslas life in the specific order in which they took place.
The events of Teslas life had to be written in order to understand the analysis, and so they were,

but information about Teslas invention was not needed to the same degree. After finishing the
analysis and the biography, both the deadlines and the essay had been greatly over run, the
inventions were not included as their own section, but the key ones were integrated into his life.
The Process as a whole was not unlike that of the prior projects, including all the major
steps: proposal, gathering and taking notes on sources, and editing the drafts of all of the
products.
Time Management in this project was almost a reciprocal to that of Lego League.
Whereas in that project time was not used constructively but all deadlines where met, in this
project only the first few deadlines were met with very constructive use of time. The first
deadlines, those of proposal and research were met, but all of the product deadlines were off by a
week. This was, as can be seen by the products created, due not to unproductive use of time, but
from having a topic too large to handle in the period of time set.
The research process for this project was one that was different than other projects. The
scope of the project, again, was too huge. Note taking was improved upon, but because of the
way the sources were structured, it was still lacking. Utilization of the live source was by far
better than in prior projects. The research process was also improved upon because of the types
of sources used, and the methods to find them. The focus skill was also related to research, being
effective note taking. More than notes, writing down my own impressions of Tesla help in
storing and organizing information, especially in writing the analysis of his life.
The majority of Thinking came into play in writing the analysis on Teslas life. The
thinking that was involved mostly concerned evaluating cause and effect, and determining why
certain events happened the way they did. The same steps were used in predicting what would

have happened had Tesla acted in a different way, or one of the major events had not happened.
Planning and choosing the best method was also used it the creation of the generator.
Certainly the type of written product was different, the communication skill being writing
of events in chronological order. Unlike a five part essay, a biography is much more restricted; in
this project, a very good thing.
Even someone who had no idea what any of the three projects I have done so far, could
see that out of the prior three the Tesla project was the one with the best products. Half of that
would be the written products, which though is twenty pages, is truly only eight, the same as the
telegraph project. This is because the first twelve pages are only the events of Teslas life, for
which a hundred page source was only able to touch upon. Moreover it is only collecting the
major events and condensing them into a twelve page overview. The generator is the greater
product, though it only demonstrates the principal behind the generation of electricity.
In the Lego League the Community Membership grading was, for the most part based on
the thoughts expressed in the parent-teacher conferences; in the Tesla project a more concrete
reason is also present. Some of determining what would be the best next step was with the help
of other students. Tyana Packwood was the primary person to talk to about making the wheel in
terms of scheduling when and to a lesser degree explaining the Mr. Schroeder what it was I
wanted to make. Samantha Goodrich was who I asked whether gears were a practical choice or
not. In all I do not believe my Community Membership has been increased or decreased form the
last assessment, but this provides only a more concrete assurance.
In all, the Tesla project was mildly more successful than the prior two and the products
were much better. The project, however, took much longer than expected and so if the products
were not exceptional it would only mean that time had not been used wisely. Like the Telegraph

project, the life of Tesla was very informational and has led to the next project, Electrical
Circuitry. The Tesla project, has 89.45 hours, and between one and two more hours that will be in
editing the analysis.